LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Keep Rattling the Elite

Just a note of appreciation and thanks for Ms. Margot McMillen's
piece entitled "No Strings" (3/1/02 TPP) We citizens have to reawaken
our political will and activism from it's Rip van Winkle sleep and
fight against this corrupt, corporate triad of Agribusiness, Chemical
and Pharmaceutical industries. If the American people really wanted
the Agribusiness giants, or other giant industry cartels like them,
to be subsidized with our tax dollars, our representatives on Capitol
Hill would pass the bills through the Congress and Senate with names
like: The Mega Agriconglomerate Enrichment Program, or, Dump
Unbelievable Amounts of Pesticides on Colombia Act, or the Paperwork
Redundancy and Freedom to Own Multiple Vacation Homes bill. But we
get names like: The Freedom to Farm program, or, Plan Colombia, or
the Patient's Bill of Rights. Why? Because these corporately funded
politicians know most Americans want the small family farmer to
succeed. Most Americans aren't interested in Dow Chemical's bottom
line. Most Americans would prefer access to universal health care.
The names of these corporate welfare bills are written in order to
deceive us as to who will actually benefit from them.

Remember ADM's corrupt price-fixing [executive], being
quoted as saying that the consumer is ADM's enemy and their
competitor's are their friend? "The nature of what's to come"
evidently doesn't include small family farmers who work for an honest
living? The protests against the WTO in Seattle, the World Bank and
IMF protests and Ralph Nader's presidential campaign have really
begun to rattle the elite's confidence. Scared, you say? Have you
seen the proliferation of new commercials recently with angry
protesters in the background? Madison Avenue is evidently not content
with branding cars and soda pop anymore, but is being paid to smear
and dismiss protesters; such as, those who follow their conscience
and fight for social justice. These new ads portray civic activists
as burnt out, '60's era hippie time warps. Like the glassy eyed guy
staring at someone driving a shiny SUV droning "You must change. You
must change." Or that soda ad using a Danny DeVito puppet, where all
the protesters are very small, don't you know, and the executive's
face lying in the lounge chair is anonymous. Humm. You know, don't
look at the man behind the curtain (containing scoundrels like
Kenneth Lay, working the puppets of government) just be like them.
Conform and you'll be a winner. Protesters, they imply, are just
whining losers. King George III probably called those protesters who
refused to pay the tea tax losers too. But were they?

Charles A. Robinson
Boulder, Colo.

Enron Implications

The facts keep dribbling out and it is becoming obvious that Enron
executives were running a giant pyramid scheme. Even the
pro-corporation corporate media is reporting this indisputable fact,
but they have taken great care to avoid addressing a major
implication.

G.W. Bush occupies the White House thanks to intervention by the
Supreme Court, not because he actually won the election. He came
close enough to winning to allow this, thanks to unprecedented
contributions from Corporate America and Enron was his number one
contributor. Democrats as well as Republicans who received
contributions from Enron as well are "returning" Enron contributions
by sending equivalent amounts to Enron Employee relief organizations
and etc. That's nice, but the damage has been done. The votes that
this stolen money bought need to be returned as well.

How the heck can you do that you ask? Very simple! Just transfer
the % votes equivalent to the % campaign contributions received from
Enron to opponents the politician defeated. If, after doing so, the
politician would still have won, he or she can remain in office. If
the transfer gives the opponent enough votes to win, the election
results should be overturned.

In most cases, the election results would stand. As G.W. Bush
actually lost the election without a transfer of votes, he might as
well head for Texas immediately and all the pay offs to contributors
he has arranged while in the White House should be undone.

Charles Leach
Lynchburg, Ohio

War on Corporations

A rare moment of epiphany ... anger over the destruction of our
most basic civil liberties, fear of the coming collapse of the
hyperinflated economy, wonder at our leaders' official embrace of
Mossad-style interrogation techniques and keeping over a thousand
human beings in isolated jails indefinitely without charging them,
the infestation of our highest corridors of power with the corporate
slimeys stealing their most poorly paid workers' futures ... the
solution hits me! Torture Ken Lay until the *?#%! talks.

George Shapely
Petaluma CA

Bush is Lying

"How do you know when a politician is lying?" "His lips are
moving."

Over and over people seem to be bewildered by the fact that Bush
loudly proclaims one thing while doing something else; claiming to be
"The Education President" while gutting support for education;
listening to him swear that Enron got no help from the
administration; watching while Abraham destroys energy policy, and
proclaiming that we cannot afford one vital program after another
while spending billions of dollars in destroying a country which was
already destroyed. (How many children could you raise up to Harvard
standards for the cost of ONE "Big Blue" daisycutter bomb?)

What people don't understand is that Bush's total political
philosophy is informed by two factors; first, that his grandfather
Prescott was one of Adolf Hitler's chief financiers; without him and
Montague Norman, Hitler would never have come to be the power he was,
and so not have been the force behind a lot of problems &emdash; but
Bush still apparently believes Fascism to be a good idea (Ashcroft,
etc.), and second, the Ronald Reagan Government Program philosophy,
which can be summed up as follows: "Appoint avowed enemies of a
program to head it; if it survives, it deserved to." Only Bush has
carried it to absurd extremes &emdash; extremes Reagan never dared
to, because he did not have a Congress of pussycats, as Bush has. And
therein lies the problem. What we are supposed to have in this
country is a system of checks and balances; what we actually have is
a system of checks; bearing signatures like Ken Lay, or officers of
Wyeth, Merck, Sharp & Dohme, ADM, Exxon, etc. We have a
government of the acquiescent by the corrupt, and I have no simple
solution for it except to suggest that if we made it a policy to
routinely vote AGAINST anyone who has been in office more than four
years, because it takes that long to become fully co-opted, we might
get better government!

Edward G. Robles
Franklin, N.C.

Challenge 'Penron-tagon' Budget

Senator Daschle is right to challenge the administration's ongoing
strategy and funding for the continuation and expansion of the war on
terrorism; that's his job. If someone had challenged Enron's
leadership and funding operations, many thousands of employees and
investors would be better off today.

Following the attack on America, the administration asked for,
and received, a "blank check" to fund the toppling of the Taliban,
the destruction of Osama's al-Qaeda network, and the creation of the
department of Homeland Security. Yet, they now bristle at the
suggestion that they should be held accountable for results. True,
the Taliban have been removed from governance, but where is Omar and
his senior officials? What assurances are there that they are not now
merely planning for their return to power? True, the al-Qaeda network
has seemingly been disrupted, but where is Osama? More importantly,
where are Osama's senior officials? There were initial estimates of
over 3,000 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, yet, there are less
than 500 al-Qaeda detainees! Where are they? There are now reports
they are indeed re-grouping within Afghanistan to continue their
"holy war." Although Americans feel safer on the homefront, the
al-Qaeda "sleepers" reported to be in this country are still on the
loose. Where are they? Why haven't they been apprehended? Why hasn't
our domestic "anthraxer" been locked up? Why has there been such a
meager meaningful accomplishment here at home?

In recognition of an ongoing expenditure of $1 billion per day,
Americans expect there will be an ongoing accountability for results.
Senator Daschle's courageous leadership should be applauded. The
hysterical grousing of Senator Lott and Representative DeLay is a
reflection of their failed leadership.

Tom Austin
Cleveland, Ohio

Did you ever notice that:

The same folks who want accountability in the Department of
Education DON'T want it in the Department of Defense.

The same folks who DON'T want Darwinian Evolution taught in
school want to turn America into a Social Darwinian lab.

The same folks who want to destroy every visage of Saddam Hussein
in Iraq want to erect a statue of Ronald Reagan in every county in
the United States, put him on money and Mount Rushmore.

The same folks who loudly profess a belief in the After Life are
the last ones to want to go to Their Reward; 'tho they are more than
willing for you to go ahead of them and will gladly send you on your
way defending their lives and way of life.

The same folks who make millions performing "miracles" head to
the doctor when they even suspect something is wrong with them, not
to another "healer".

The same folks who don't want to pay taxes want to enjoy what
taxes fund.

The same folks who condemn others for having several wives at
once are most likely to practice serial monogamy.

The same folks who are sickened by those who "crawl into the
bottle" to solve their problems are most likely to "crawl into the
Bible" to solve theirs, with much the same results.

Chris Lane Gray
Monticello, Ark.

National debt still rising

About two weeks ago [in February], I was watching CNN and
heard Sen. Ernest Hollings [D-S.C.] address the Congress. He
was speaking on the national debt report he had received that morning
on the Internet NationalDebt.com. The report showed that the National
Debt had not reduced by one cent but rather had been rising by around
$350 billion a day. The debt owed the Social Security over $2.7
trillion. Sen. Hollings had stated a few years earlier that if the
national debt would be decreased by any amount, that he would jump
off the Capitol Dome. He stated there was no reduction in the debt
now or in the future and the risk of him having to jump off the
Capitol Dome would not happen in his lifetime.

A Bay Area newspaper does print the national debt a couple of
times a week on the financial page. I have followed the debt report
for over a year and have found no reduction in the debt.

Congress may claim to have balanced the Federal budget but they
have failed to factor into the budget the $400 billion trade deficit.
The $400 billion trade deficit far exceeds the so-called budget
savings.

Sam Caponio
Mendocino, Calif.

Editor's Note: According to the US Treasury's Public Debt
Online (www.publicdebt.treas.gov), while the national debt did
consistently rise from $2.3 trillion on Sept. 30, 1987, to $6
trillion on Feb. 28, 2002, it fell by $26 billion on March 1. It
resumed growing the next day and reached $5,991,318,519,771.93 as of
March 7.

Wake Up Politicians

The Enron corruption should be a wake up call for all politicians,
and surely a realization that this mess is just the tip of the
iceberg. What about Monsanto, Con-Agra, Archer Daniel Midland (ADM)
and other giant agri-businesses. With hundreds of millions of dollars
at their disposal for campaign contributions and hiring lobbyist,
they're able to control government policies, keeping commodity prices
low to the farmer, so they can continually rake in obscene profits
selling high to the consumer. Government regulations exist to protect
the public from concentrated economic powers. But what good are
existing regulation if they are not enforced? There are anti-trust
laws violated on a regular bases. Merging conglomerates seem to be
able to operate above the law, with no fear of prosecution because of
their vast wealth and political clout. If they are fined, its just
considered the cost of doing business. It's time for President Bush
to do what President Teddy Roosevelt did. Stop taking money from
them. Break them up into smaller companies. The love of money and
power leads to corruption. If our leaders don't have the back bone to
do it, then we need to find some that will.